


what happens in rio

by almostafantasia



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Athletes, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Fuckboy Griffin, Modern Pentathlete Lexa, Olympics, Rio de Janeiro, Swimmer Clarke, just like canon, that's right lexa competitively fights with a sword and rides a horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 04:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10564011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almostafantasia/pseuds/almostafantasia
Summary: Lexa has one plan going into the Olympics – to keep her head down, train hard, and come away with a medal. What she doesn’t anticipate is the distraction that comes in the form of an Australian swimmer by the name of Clarke Griffin who seems to have her sight set on much more than just a gold medal.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this fic last summer during the Rio Olympics but totally forgot to post it until I was reminded of it a few days ago and decided better late than never. I hope you enjoy reading it despite it being eight months late!

Anya says that she’s being “extra”. Lexa prefers the word “thorough”.

Whatever word they’re using to describe Lexa’s preparations for the Rio Olympics, Lexa always likes to go above and beyond what is expected of her and so on top of a rigorous training schedule for five different sports, she’s also been teaching herself Brazilian Portuguese. Lexa thinks it’s just basic manners. The people of Rio de Janeiro are being kind enough to host what is going to be one of the most memorable three weeks of Lexa’s life, the very least she can do in return is attempt to communicate with the locals in their native tongue.

And so, going into the Opening Ceremony, where most of her fellow Americans are surprised at the news, Lexa already knows that the team from the _Estados Unidos_ will be entering the stadium in an alphabetised procession a good hour and a half earlier than they would if the host nation’s mother tongue were English. What she is not prepared for, however, is the blonde Australian that she meets during the latter part of the procession.

“So what’s your thing then?”

The US team is so large compared to most of the other countries that they’ve spread out from the area they were directed to upon entering the stadium, and Lexa finds herself standing beside a girl wearing the quirky green striped blazer of Australia.

“Sorry, what?” she frowns across at the girl.

“Your sport?” the girl clarifies, and from both her condescending tone and the smirk that crosses her face at Lexa’s confusion, Lexa can already tell that she isn’t going to like this girl. “What event are you competing in?”

“I’m a modern pentathlete,” she responds.

“Rogue,” the Australian comments, her accent curling around the word in a way that sends a shiver down Lexa’s spine. “I had you pegged for a gymnast. You have that kind of aloof, _I’m-better-than-you_ thing about you.”

“I’m sorry, but what sport do you do?” Lexa snaps impatiently. She’s already so done with this conversation – she’s only even at the opening ceremony because Anya pretty much guilt-tripped her into leaving the Olympic Village – and with each second that passes, her irritation at being in the packed stadium instead of in her nice comfy bed grows. “I don’t think there’s an event for insulting other competitors.”

Blue eyes sparkling under the spotlights that shine down on them from the upper edge of the stadium, the Australian replies, “Oh, so you have an attitude too.”

Lexa doesn’t get the chance to converse with the girl any longer, because fingers clasp around her wrist and the familiar voice of Anya, Lexa’s best friend from college and fellow US athlete, sounds in her ear.

“Let’s do a selfie for Instagram. We’re in the goddamn _Olympics_.”

Lexa poses for the phone that Anya holds in her outstretched hand, wrapping an arm around the taller girl’s waist, adjusting her hair so that it falls in aesthetic waves over one shoulder, and then flashes her best smile. It takes a while to get the perfect shot and by the time Anya has taken a photo that she is satisfied with, the Australian has long since moved on.

“So how do you know Clarke Griffin?” Anya asks, as she taps away at the screen of her phone, swiping through filters and then posting the photo to her Instagram account.

“Who?” Lexa asks with a frown.

“Griffin. The girl you were just talking to. The Australian.”

Lexa shrugs, glancing around. More athletes spill into the stadium every minute and the Australian is just one of thousands of people surrounding them. Lexa suspects that if she can’t see the blonde now, then she probably won’t have a chance of coming across her again tonight, and she’s not entirely sure whether it’s relief or disappointment that she feels when her eyes are unable to pick out a flash of blonde hair from amidst the crowds.

“I don’t know her,” Lexa answers, turning her attention back to Anya. “She asked me what event I compete in. How do you know her?”

Anya’s jaw clenches, her back teeth grinding together in such a way that Lexa can almost hear the sound they make in Anya’s mouth. Her forehead creases into a disgruntled frown, and Lexa almost regrets even asking.

“She’s a swimmer. She beat me by two hundredths of a second in the world championships last year. She’s all over the media in the swimming world. And she’s bad news.”

Her brief conversation with the Australian swimmer has already left her curious but Anya’s reaction to the girl, the way she speaks of her with a grimace on her face akin to having a nasty taste in her mouth, intrigues her even more.

“Why?”

Anya rolls her eyes, and replies, “She’s always insufferable at meets. She makes jokes before races when everybody is trying to get in the zone, acting like she doesn’t care where she comes as long as she has a good time, and then she’ll knock half a second off her own world record, only to pass it off as nothing afterwards. And in the interviews she’s all potty-mouthed, like “fucking” this and “fucking” that, and…” Anya trails off with an exasperated sigh, then continues, “She messes with your head and it’s _so_ frustrating that she’s so good in the pool. Just stay away from her, Lex. Don’t give her the chance to get to you too.”

Lexa dismisses Anya with a wave of her hand.

“Two different countries, two different sports,” she shrugs. “There’s over ten thousand athletes here, what are the chances that I bump into her again?”

* * *

In hindsight, the answer to Lexa’s question should have been _very likely_ , because fate has a habit of working in the most awful ways and dishing out the exact opposite of what Lexa wants. In fact, Lexa only has to wait a mere eight hours after her first encounter with Clarke Griffin for the second.

It’s late before they get back to the Olympic Village after the opening ceremony but it doesn’t stop Lexa from waking up the following day at the crack of dawn and heading down to the training pool with Anya for a morning swim. Olympic athletes can’t afford lie-ins. Prospective medal winners can’t afford lie-ins.

Prospective medal winners can’t afford distractions like Clarke Griffin either, but that seems to be far out of Lexa’s control.

“What’s up Pentathlon Girl?”

Lexa is adjusting the silicone swimming hat on top of her head when she hears the chilling Australian drawl. Her shoulder muscles tense as she spots the swimmer sauntering over to her, goggles dangling from one hand and a familiar smirk on her face that Lexa, now that she sees it once again, is pretty certain haunted her dreams last night.

“That’s not my name,” says Lexa stiffly.

“Oh, I know,” Clarke replies, raising her eyebrows. She continues, “Lexa Woods, two-time US youth modern pentathlon champion. Recently graduated from Stanford, majored in Psychology with a full-ride sports scholarship.”

Her jaw drops open, eyes wide as she gapes at the other girl.

“How do you…?”

“I read your Wikipedia page,” explains Clarke, shrugging as if the answer is obvious. “What can I say, you piqued my curiosity. I’d never really heard much about the modern pentathlon before, but apparently you’re quite the star. Fencing, huh?” Clarke leans in a little bit closer and narrows her eyes, a trace of a sly smirk passing across her lips as she asks, “That’s just waving swords about, right?”

Lexa can feel her blood pressure start to rise, this encounter with the insufferable Australian giving her the exact opposite start to her long day of training that the early morning swim is supposed to provide her with.

“It’s not just waving swords about!” Lexa growls back. “It’s an art.”

“God, you’re hot when you’re angry,” Clarke tells her, lowering her voice ever so slightly in a way that has Lexa’s heart stopping in her chest as her lungs suddenly forget how to work. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to train. See you around, Woods.”

_I hope not_ , Lexa thinks to herself, as she launches herself off the tiled floor and into the pool with an elegant dive.

* * *

Lexa finds herself watching the first heats of the swimming in between lunch and her daily weights session in the gym. The television in the corner of her room in the Olympic Village is small, and the coverage is surprisingly limited (Lexa has a choice between judo and the swim heats, both of which are in Portuguese), but Indra keeps reminding her that her relaxation time is just as important as the training and with Anya out at the pool, there isn’t much else for her to do.

She tells herself that she’s watching the swimming to see how Anya is getting on.

More realistically, Lexa is gay and weak and she knows it’s because of the sheer number of toned female biceps on display.

Specifically Clarke Griffin’s biceps.

(Lexa never realised that an upper arm could be so captivating until Clarke starts stretching on the side of the pool before her first heat.)

Anya wins her heat, and Lexa changes quickly into a sports bra and gym shorts ready for her cardio session with Indra.

(Clarke wins her heat too, and when she smirks and winks at the camera that pans to her at the end of the race, Lexa wonders if she can justify being ten minutes late to training so that she can take a cold shower.)

* * *

Lexa decides that she irrefutably _hates_ Clarke Griffin.

She doesn’t really understand how she can hold so much dislike for somebody she’s spent a grand total of two and a half minutes in the company of, but she does. She thinks it might have something to do with the way that Anya returns to the Olympic Village on the second night of the Games with a silver medal around her neck and a dejected look on her face, shutting herself in her room after saying nothing more than “fucking Griffin” to Lexa.

But in reality, it’s probably mostly to do with the fact that even under the ever-watching eye of the cameras broadcasting her face to millions of sports fans around the word, Clarke Griffin is the cockiest little shit that Lexa has ever encountered, and it’s infuriating _._

* * *

All Lexa wants is to get her lunch from the cafeteria and eat it in peace, but of course fate has decided to raise a giant middle finger to that idea.

“’Sup, Woods.”

Clarke Griffin is wearing a snapback.

A fucking _snapback_.

And of course, in the epitome of fuckboy, she’s wearing it backwards.

“I’m sensing some bad vibes here, Woods,” Clarke continues after Lexa says nothing, gesturing between their two bodies.

Attempting to push away the jumble of thoughts she has about the hat on Clarke’s head and the way it makes Clarke look (and the way it makes Lexa _feel_ ), Lexa turns away from Clarke slightly, picking up a tray from the stack at the beginning of the food serving counter.

As a means of explanation for her cold treatment of the swimmer, Lexa replies, “You won the gold medal that my best friend has been dreaming about since she was a kid.”

“Well, what can I say, I’ve always been good at the breaststroke.”

Lexa can’t help herself, her head snaps up at Clarke’s words, and of _course_ the girl is smirking at her again, when is she ever _not_ smirking? Lexa knows that Clarke has only said it to elicit a reaction from her, and though exactly what kind of reaction she wants, Lexa is not entirely sure, only that she isn’t going to give Clarke the satisfaction of getting one.

“I’m sorry, that was an awful joke. It was a freestyle race, anyway,” Clarke shrugs vaguely, and then adds, “Besides, Anya’s got other events that she can win the gold in. She’s a better butterfly swimmer than me, she’s got that race in the bag.”

Until now, Lexa didn’t realise that it was possible help oneself to the salad bar in an aggressive manner, but it’s what she does, using the tongs provided to viciously snatch at the food as if taking her anger out on the spinach is going to cause Clarke harm via some mysterious voodoo magic.

“She’d better,” Lexa growls under her breath.

* * *

After the meeting in the cafeteria, Lexa goes several blissful days without coming across Clarke and it is _heaven_. Or at least it would be, if Lexa’s thoughts weren’t consumed twenty four hours a day by blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes.

She’s been off form for days in training, which would perhaps be excusable if Lexa didn’t have just a week and a half until competing at the Olympic Games, of all competitions. But she does, and she can’t afford to be this far from the correct mindset with so little time left to go.

And of course Indra picks up on it.

“Where’s your focus, Woods?”

Lexa tucks her sword under her arm and lifts the mask from her face, shaking her hair out and wiping her sweaty forehead on the back of her arm.

“Sorry,” she mumbles dejectedly, as she places her equipment down with her bag at the side of the training space and takes a long swig from her water bottle.

“You’re never like this,” Indra comments. “What’s on your mind?”

Shrugging, Lexa collapses into a chair exhaustedly, and then replies, “Just the Olympic atmosphere, I guess. It’s intense.”

“And you’re good enough to not let it get to you,” Indra is quick to remind her. “You’ve been training for this for years. Don’t let yourself miss out because you got caught up in the excitement of being at the Olympics.”

If only Indra knew the truth.

Lexa is about seventy percent certain that Clarke was flirting with her at the pool the other morning, and having confessed to looking up Lexa on Wikipedia, Lexa knows without a doubt that Clarke must have read the single sentence confirming her to be gay and out. And perhaps Lexa has been a little curious about the other girl too - a quick google search when she returned to her room revealing that Clarke has been photographed out on dates with both men and women - and that’s all it takes for Lexa to realise that perhaps if she were to flirt back, it wouldn’t go entirely unwanted.

It’s right up there towards the top of the list of worst ideas that Lexa has ever had.

And so, she tries to ignore the all thoughts of Clarke, channelling her frustration into a competitive spirit that she hopes will give her an edge against her opponents.

* * *

With five days to go until the start of her own event, Lexa finds herself taking a chair in the banked seating at the side of the competition pool for the final night of the swimming. Anya is only in one of the races tonight, but it’s a big one – the medley relay – and quite a few of them have made it down to the pool to show their support for their fellow Americans.

Clarke is racing too, obviously, but Lexa tells herself that it’s not even a factor in her decision to be here tonight.

(It’s the second biggest lie she tells herself tonight, right behind the fact that she is _definitely not_ admiring the curve of Clarke’s ass in her lycra swimsuit as the Australian team walks out onto the poolside.)

It’s a close race, with the entire US contingent on their feet and shouting themselves hoarse in support of the four girls, who each take a turn to propel themselves through the water from one end of the pool to the other and back again faster than Lexa has ever seen them do it before. And it pays off. They beat the Australian team to the gold medal by less than half a second and people around Lexa go _nuts_.

When Lexa’s eyes stray across one lane to the second place team and she spots the look of disappointment flash across Clarke’s face as she glances up to the scoreboard and realises that her efforts on the final leg weren’t quite enough to win gold, there’s the briefest of moments where Lexa feels guilty about cheering Anya and her team on so enthusiastically. But it’s gone as soon as it’s there, and Clarke is back to her usual self, smiling at the cameras and waving her acknowledgments to the patches of Australian fans dotted amongst the cheering crowd.

Lexa watches as Clarke hoists herself out of the water, trying not to pay too much attention to the way that the swimmer’s biceps tense as she climbs out of the pool. Clarke gets pulled into a group hug by her teammates, but not before her eyes somehow pick out Lexa’s face from amidst the thousands watching her and sending the tiniest nod of her head Lexa’s way.

* * *

She bumps into Clarke the following morning in the Olympic Village, looking suitably hungover but still happy, wearing just a simple pair of denim shorts and a tank top instead of her usual yellow and green sportswear.

“I saw you at the pool last night,” Clarke comments, pushing her sunglasses up onto the top of her head so that she can look at Lexa properly. “Training for five sports and you’ve still got time to watch some of the other events, huh?”

“If I trained every hour of the day, I’d pass out from exhaustion before I could even think about competing,” Lexa replies with a shrug.

“What, even the Commander has her weaknesses?” Clarke teases her.

Lexa startles as she hears the nickname so unexpectedly. It’s something that she hasn’t really heard too much since she graduated from college a year ago, a name chosen for her by the other girls in her varsity soccer team back in high school when she became captain because of the fiercely determined way that she led them to win the championship, a name that somehow transferred to the other sports she took part in a stuck with her throughout her college years. The only person who ever calls her the Commander these days is Anya, and that’s usually when she’s trying to get a rise out of Lexa, so when she hears Clarke say it, it definitely takes her aback.

But Lexa decides that if it had been Clarke’s Australian accent curling around the nickname for all those years instead of the familiar American accents of her teammates and friends, perhaps she would have liked being called the Commander a little bit more.

“How do you know about that name?”

Clarke answers as elusively as possible, and if it is her aim to completely fluster Lexa, she is most definitely succeeding.

“I have my ways of finding things out. Especially when I see something I’m interested in.”

Clarke’s manner of avoiding giving Lexa a proper answer is not the only thing that catches her off guard, because the blatant flirting is more than enough to have Lexa blushing and to stop her from being able to give a coherent response.

Laughing under her breath at the way that Lexa opens her mouth to say something, and then immediately shuts it again, Clarke takes a couple of sauntering steps backwards and lifts a hand to her head in a kind of salute.

“I’ll see you around, Woods,” she says, and then she strolls off into the crowds of people as casually as she emerged from them a few minutes ago.

* * *

“Nine … and _ten_.”

Anya helps Lexa to place the barbell back on its stand, then tosses a towel at Lexa, who catches it deftly in one hand and uses it to wipe at her sweaty forehead.

“Good workout,” Anya says encouragingly. Since her own events finished a few days ago, Anya has devoted some of the time that she previously spent on her own training helping Lexa to prepare for the imminent start of the pentathlon tomorrow morning. “How are you feeling?”

Letting her towel drop to the floor, Lexa hydrates herself with a long gulp from her water bottle and then shrugs diffidently, “Good. Itching for tomorrow.”

“You’re going to do well, I can feel it,” Anya tells her with an assuring pat on the back. “You’ve done enough preparation.”

Arching a single eyebrow in Anya’s direction, Lexa comments drily, “So have my opponents. This is the _Olympics_.”

Anya reaches out for Lexa’s shoulder, resting one hand there as she frowns and asks, “Are you sure you’re alright? You’ve seemed a little on edge the last couple of days and I didn’t want to say anything in case it threw you off even more but I want to know that you’re okay.”

“I’m good,” Lexa nods, though she’s hardly convincing enough to believe the words herself. “Just the Games, you know? Tomorrow is the biggest day of my life.”

Lexa doesn’t know why, which perhaps unsettles her even more, but Clarke’s face emerges from the shadows of her mind, complete with the backwards snapback and the familiar self-assured glint in her blue eyes. She hates how she’s spent hardly any time at all with the Australian, and yet Clarke manages to occupy her thoughts so often. Lexa finds herself thinking of Clarke both when she’s training and when she’s not – Clarke has even invaded her dreams twice so far this week.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Lexa has no plan for this situation. She’s been training for the Olympics for pretty much her entire life – even when she was a kid she would watch the Games on the television and dream of the day when it would be her competing at such an elite level, but she never prepared for meeting somebody like Clarke. Somebody so vibrant and ineffaceable and who manages to be the exact opposite of what Lexa needs right now and yet exactly what Lexa finds herself desiring almost as much as that elusive gold medal.

She’s a mar on Lexa’s concentration and Lexa can’t be having that, not with less than twenty four hours to go before she competes in the biggest sporting event in the world.

“Don’t let it get to your head,” Anya tells her, the words much easier said now that her own Olympic journey is over for the next four years. “Go out there and do what you’ve been doing your whole life. And enjoy it. That’s the most important part. This is the fucking _Olympics_.”

But no sooner have they packed away Lexa’s things into her sports bag and left the gym, does the distraction herself make an appearance in person.

“Pentathlon Girl! Hey!”

Lexa almost stumbles over her own feet as Clarke appears as if out of nowhere, accosting Lexa pretty much as soon as she’s through the double doors leading out of the gym.

“Clarke,” she manages to choke out past the surprise that manifests itself as a lump lodged in Clarke’s throat. “Hi. What are you doing here?”

Clarke spares a glance in Anya’s direction and rolls her eyes at her rival in the pool, before her attention returns to Lexa as she says, “I just wanted to wish you luck for tomorrow.”

The disgruntled sigh of resentment that Anya lets out can probably be heard from the other side of Rio, but she chooses not to voice her worries aloud.

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says to Lexa, taking a couple of slow steps away from the pair in the direction of the American quarters in the Olympic Village. “Remember what I just told you, Lexa.”

Lexa doesn’t think she can forget. Everyone is reminding her about not getting distracted – Anya, her coach Indra, even parts of her own subconscious repeatedly remind her multiple times each day that Clarke Griffin is a distraction that Lexa’s medal hopes can’t afford. And yet she can’t help that way that she is drawn in by the swaggering confidence that seems to drip from every one of Clarke’s pores. Clarke Griffin is a bit of an asshole, Lexa will readily admit that, but _boy_ is she an attractive asshole.

Besides, Lexa has always had a bit of a thing for the bad girls.

“You know as well as I do that luck doesn’t count for much in competitions like these,” Clarke continues once Anya is well out of earshot, “but I wanted to be able to see you once more to just let you know that I’m wishing you all the best for tomorrow.”

It’s the most sincere thing that Clarke has ever said to Lexa - the _only_ sincere thing she has ever said, in fact – and it catches her completely off-guard.

“Why?” Lexa asks the question that’s on her mind, voicing her muddled thoughts aloud. “You hardly even know me.”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not on my mind,” Clarke replies, the way that her eyebrow quirks ever so slightly is reminiscent of the Clarke that Lexa has become acquainted with over the last couple of weeks. “Maybe I’d like to know you.”

There’s a brief moment, in which their eyes remain firmly fixated on each other, and Lexa thinks that they might be having a _moment_. Exactly what kind of moment, or what it means, she isn’t able to establish, but Lexa has an overwhelming feeling deep in her gut that this is an instance that she’s supposed to look back on in years to come with fond nostalgia.

Lexa knows that Clarke feels it too because Clarke is the one to glance away, clearing her throat before hurriedly changing the subject.

“Anyway,” she says, “I’m sure you’re going to kill it tomorrow.”

Clarke hesitates for just a moment, twitching slightly in her movements, before she seems to make a decision and leans in to press a kiss to Lexa’s cheek.

The touch of her lips against Lexa’s skin is searing. The contact must only last for a lingering second but Lexa feels it long after Clarke has pulled back, as if Clarke’s lips have burnt a hole right through Lexa’s cheek. Lexa doesn’t have the mental capacity to collate a coherent response – if Clarke’s aim was to reduce Lexa to speechlessness with a peck on the cheek then it has certainly worked. Lexa barely has an awareness of what country she’s in and why, let alone anything more complex than that.

And then, almost as if it hasn’t happened at all, Clarke turns to leave. She calls nonchalantly over her shoulder, “See you around, Woods,” before she walks away while jauntily whistling what Lexa thinks might be the Australian national anthem.

Holy _fuck_ , Lexa is screwed.

* * *

The problem is that Lexa is now two hundred percent certain that Clarke has been flirting with her.

The problem is that she actually really doesn’t mind at all.

The problem is that Lexa starts competing at nine o’clock the following morning and all she can think about is how soft Clarke’s lips felt against her cheek.

* * *

Lexa is remarkably relaxed when she wakes up.

There’s something surprisingly calming about knowing that she’s spent her entire life working towards today, a real sense of purpose that Lexa just thrives off. She’s done all the training, she knows that she’s good enough to win a medal, all she has to do is try her best and hope that all the hard work pays off.

It certainly helps that the first event is fencing, arguably one of Lexa’s strongest. She took up the sport at a much younger age than most, wielding a blade almost as long as she was tall. The sword is pretty much just an extension of her right arm at this point, and as soon as she’s in the zone, dressed in her protective gear with her face covered by the mask emblazoned with the American flag, it passes in a well-rehearsed blur of nimble footwork and precise attacks.

She comes out of the fencing in first place. She doesn’t celebrate. There isn’t time. With four other sports to compete in across three more events in the next two days, she has much more on her mind than the fact that her name is currently right at the top of the leader board, thirty five other women clamouring for the position that she holds.

* * *

The swim comes second, Lexa’s weakest of the five, but it hardly matters because it’s just two hundred metres, four lengths of the fifty metre pool, just over two minutes of her life that she has to get through in order to continue with the rest of the competition.

It’s not as bad as she expects. It never is.

She finishes in nineteenth place, but when she is reminded of Clarke, just as she makes the turn into the final length, and realises that on the off-chance that Clarke is watching her swim, she will no doubt be laughing at Lexa’s sloppy technique and slow time, she propels herself faster than she believed possible to the wall at the far end of the pool and sets a new personal best in the water.

* * *

The third event, the show jumping, passes without problem. Lexa has always been good at this part of the pentathlon – while most pentathletes take up riding as a fifth sport once they’ve mastered the other four, making it their weakest event, Lexa grew up in the open countryside and has been riding horses for almost as long as she’s been tall enough to be able to. With the fencing and the horse riding being her strongest events, Lexa has always imagined that she would have made a great warrior in an alternate fantasy universe, but she’ll have to settle for a medal-winning pentathlete in this life instead.

She has to earn her position on the podium first though, and the ride itself is always a nerve-inducing one. There’s something undeniably terrifying in knowing that your chances at winning a medal can be quashed by the mood of a horse that you only meet twenty minutes before the ride that matters, but Lexa is good with the animals. Skill can only take you so far in the show-jumping, the rest of it is about the mindset and trusting the horse to follow your command.

(Lexa is grateful that she only spots Clarke face in the crowd after she’s landed the final jump in a perfect run, knowing that if she had known that the Australian’s eyes were following her every move before the event, her mind would have strayed from the right place and maybe the horse wouldn’t have carried her into fourth place on the overall leaderboard going into the final combined event.)

* * *

_This is it. You’ve trained for this. Your whole life has been leading to this moment. You can do it._

Lexa recites the words like a mantra in her mind over and over again as she bounces up and down on the start line for the final event amidst her fellow competitors. The atmosphere is tense – each of them knows that the next fifteen minutes could define their lives. Three laps of the course, interspersed with episodes at a shooting range, that’s all it is. And yet any one of the athletes lined up ready to race could take that gold medal.

The shooting is Lexa’s least favourite part of the pentathlon. You can ace every other part of the competition but if you don’t nail the shooting then the event is as good as lost. Lexa knows from first-hand experience that all the training in the world is rendered pointless if the nerves get the better of you and leave you with a hand that is too shaky to aim at the target.

Which is why Lexa is less than happy to know that Clarke is watching her every move.

She tries to stop herself from looking up at the crowd – specifically from looking up at the section of crowd where she noticed Clarke’s face at the end of the show-jumping. Lexa doesn’t manage it for very long though. She can’t help but glance up, even despite her better judgement.

(Lexa doesn’t stop to wonder _why_ it is Clarke that her eyes are scanning the crowd for, when Anya and some of her other friends from Team USA are here to support her too.)

Her eyes find Clarke exactly where she expects to, the white tank top that she wears showing off her strong swimmer’s arms, while the snapback once again perched on her head has Lexa’s insides performing all kinds of flips and somersaults that she knows aren’t caused by pre-race nerves.

Upon noticing Lexa’s eyes on her, Clarke cups both hands around her mouth and cheers enthusiastically (Lexa thinks she might just about be able to hear the words ‘ _come on Lexa_ ’ in Clarke’s Australian drawl above the thousands of other cheers that come from the grandstands, however improbable that actually is), then lifts one of her hands in the air to wave a small paper American flag on a stick aloft.

It does something to Lexa to see this sight, it manages to both calm and focus her on the race that is less than a minute from beginning and fill her with a rush of exciting affection for the girl cheering her on from the crowd. Despite the competition, the Olympians are generally all very supportive of each other no matter what the outcome, but being seen in the colours of a country that is not your own – or waving a different country’s flag like Clarke is doing – is pretty much tantamount to treason. And so it means all the more that Clarke has taken the time not only to come down to watch Lexa compete, but to cheer for her so openly when there is an Australian athlete in hot contention for a medal only two places behind Lexa on the current leaderboard.

Lexa gets so distracted by Clarke’s presence in the crowd that she almost forgets that she still has a race to run until they’re all ushered onto the starting line in order of their current standings, and then before Lexa even knows what’s going on, the starter has fired his pistol and the first athlete is racing away, closely followed by the second, then the third, and then by Lexa.

The race is over as quickly as it starts. Retrospectively, Lexa has very little memory of those twelve minutes of her life, only a vague awareness of putting one foot in front of the other as her arms pump at her side. The shooting parts of the event are even less clear – she only knows that it happened and that there were only a few small mishaps.

Lexa propels herself across the line behind only one other athlete, having overtaken the two who started in second and third place. When she glances up at the giant screen and sees her own name on the final scoreboard next to the small picture of a silver medal it is the second best sight, right after the one of Clarke jumping up and down in the stands, small American flag clutched tightly in her fist as she cheers and waves with abandon.

* * *

There’s a lot of hanging around after the event that Lexa didn’t anticipate. All she really wants to do is go back to her room, take a hot bath to soothe her aching muscles, and then crash into bed, but she’s ushered from the finish line into several back-to-back interviews with press from around the world, then straight into the medal ceremony, and then back to the press.

It’s a good two hours after she’s received her silver medal that she finally manages to get into the bath, by which time she’s far too awake to go to bed, yet simultaneously too tired to join in with the various celebrations that are taking place.

She settles for a happy medium, dressing casually in a pair of board shorts and an old college hoodie and making her way down to the beach for some private contemplation.

It’s only after Lexa has been there for five minutes, sitting in the sand with her knees tucked up to her chest and her feet free from her shoes, that she realises she’s been followed down here.

“Hey.”

The accent as distinguishable as ever, Lexa doesn’t need to look up to know that it is Clarke who has just dropped into a cross-legged position on the soft sand beside her.

Lexa hums a greeting, keeping her eyes focused on the way that the waves gently crash against the sand just a few feet away from where they sit.

“Congratulations, by the way,” Clarke continues.

“It’s a silver medal,” Lexa shrugs indifferently, though she is secretly thrilled by her medal. It may not have been the colour she was hoping for, but to come second out of thirty six women in her first Olympics at the age of twenty three is something that Lexa will be eternally proud of.

“Which is still _awesome_!” Clarke says enthusiastically.

 “Says the girl with two golds and two silvers,” Lexa reminds her.

Clarke lets out a low grumble of concession.

“Whatever. You do five sports so it’s like the equivalent of five silver medals. Anyway, you’re what, twenty three?”

Lifting her head to look across at Clarke for the first time since the blonde’s arrival, Lexa smiles softly and lets out a low laugh under her breath, before she replies, “You read my Wikipedia page, shouldn’t you know that?”

Clarke rolls her eyes, though she doesn’t seem annoyed by Lexa’s sass, merely entertained that Lexa, no longer under the stress of training for an impending Olympic pentathlon, actually has a sense of humour.

“Touché,” she acknowledges with a tilt of her head. “My point is that you’re still young. You’ll be back in Tokyo?”

“Will _you_?”

Lexa’s question takes them both by surprise, and she looks away as soon as she asks it, preferring to gaze out at the inky blue evening sky and the moonlight that shimmers off the rippling surface of the ocean, than to acknowledge the first sign of weakness in the wall she’s been trying to keep around her in order to ward out Clarke’s not-at-all subtle and not entirely unwanted advances.

“Do you want me to be there?” Clarke asks, her voice throaty.

“No, I’d like Anya to have a clear shot at all the golds.”

Lexa’s tongue works before she’s even realising what she’s saying and she suddenly realises why Clarke is perhaps how she is – all teasing smiles and quick ripostes – because it’s much easier to joke around than to give a serious answer about feelings that she doesn’t really want to admit are actually there.

“Rude!” Clarke gasps mockingly, pretending to look affronted at Lexa’s comment. “And I thought you’d want to hang out with me again.”

“What I want is to compete at an Olympics without you distracting me out of a gold medal,” Lexa quips back.

Folding her arms across her chest, Clarke shrugs and feigns innocence, though when Lexa spares a quick glance in her direction, she can see from the way that Clarke’s mouth is turned up ever so slightly at the corners that she’s trying to fight off a smile.

“I did nothing of the sort,” Clarke insists.

“Maybe not intentionally,” acknowledges Lexa.

Lexa doesn’t have to look at Clarke to know that Clarke is staring right at her with that irritatingly attractive smirk on her face – not only can Lexa see the way that Clarke leans slightly closer out of the corner of her eye, but she can also sense the way that Clarke is looking at her.

“How did I distract you?” Clarke asks, a hint of arrogance curling around the edge of her words, as if she knows exactly what her presence has been doing to Lexa’s focus for the last couple of weeks.

“Shut up.”

Clarke grins devilishly and shuffles closer to Lexa, nudging her elbow against Lexa’s bicep in an attempt to get her to answer truthfully.

“What? Tell me. You know, so that I don’t do it again in Tokyo.”

When Lexa looks up to find Clarke a lot closer than before, the couple of feet that had been between them moments ago now diminished to just a few inches, she knows that there’s no going back. Clarke is looking at her as she always does, fearless and cocky but there’s something new in her expression now, a trace of vulnerability in her blue eyes that Lexa feels mirrored in herself through the way that her heart thumps palpably against her ribcage.

“What are we doing, Clarke?” she says breathlessly.

Clarke’s tongue darts out ever so briefly, a flash a pink moistening her top lip and Lexa’s eyes can’t help but drop to Clarke’s mouth, even for just a second, before she tears her gaze back up to meet Clarke’s.

“What do you want us to be doing?” Clarke asks, her voice much deeper than before.

“We live on different continents.”

“Have you ever heard the saying ‘ _what happens in Rio stays in Rio_ ’?”

Lexa knows exactly what Clarke is trying to do here, which only makes it all the more difficult to stop it. It almost seems inevitable now, and Lexa’s attempts to resist Clarke’s charms are really doing nothing more than prolonging the agonising wait until she finally gives in.

“That’s not how it goes,” Lexa points out feebly.

“Oh. Is it not?”

The smirk that crosses Clarke’s lips as she says these words, the little twitch that her eyebrows give as if to dare Lexa not to succumb, are so infuriating that Lexa has no choice but to close the gap between them. Her lips collide with Clarke’s slightly messily and she takes pride in the fact that Clarke lets out a little grunt of surprise as Lexa’s mouth covers her own, knowing that she holds the upper hand for the first time since meeting Clarke at the opening ceremony.

It’s quite a kiss, two weeks of one-sided teasing and sexual frustration built up into a moment of passion that holds the energy of a collision between two stars. And it doesn’t really matter what they are – athletes, Olympic medal winners, stars, or any other poetic metaphor that Lexa’s romantic side could imagine for them, only that they are inevitable, that this kiss has been an unavoidable certainty since the moment that Clarke swaggered over to Lexa in the crowded _Maracanã_ stadium.

But oh _boy_ is it worth the wait.

Lexa has competed in pentathlons around the globe, from small interstate events during high school to international competitions in front of huge crowds. She’s won an Olympic silver medal, for fuck’s sake, but _nothing_ compares to the adrenaline rush that she gets from the way that Clarke kisses her back with one hand tangled in her hair and the other curled into the soft material of Lexa’s tank top.

Lexa pulls back before she passes out from lack of oxygen to her brain, resting her forehead against Clarke and exhaling her feelings about the kiss in a single breathy, “Wow.”

If you’d asked Lexa earlier today, she would have told you that her entire life had been building up to competing in her first ever Olympic Games. Now she knows that her life has been leading to this – to _Clarke_.

Except that even though Clarke might be an inevitability, she is an inevitability who lives on the other side of the globe, an athlete with her own rigorous schedule of training and travelling to competitions. Lexa knows deep down that the second inevitability is that this can’t be long term.

_What happens in Rio stays in Rio_. Clarke’s words from earlier play back in Lexa’s mind, though where they had been teasing before, they are now heavy with the reality of life.

With her thumb gently caressing Lexa’s cheek, Clarke seems to sense where Lexa’s mind has gone and answers the question without it even needing to be asked.

“We can make this work, if you want,” she says, more serious than Lexa has ever seen her before. “I’m moving to Arizona at the end of September to train. And it’s a lot closer to Colorado Springs than Melbourne is.”

The flame of hope reignited in her chest, Lexa almost laughs in relief and narrows her eyes as she asks, “How do you know I train in Colorado Springs?”

Clarke leans in for another kiss, even as she laughs and answers, “I read you Wikipedia page, dumbass.”


End file.
